SUSPECTED DRUG BOSS SAYS HE'S MARKED MAN

Matt O'Connor, Tribune Staff WriterCHICAGO TRIBUNE

Accused drug kingpin Nate Hill admitted he sold cocaine in the early 1990s, but he insisted at the start of his trial Thursday that both the government and street gangs refused to believe he had gotten out of the business.

A gang thought he had relocated to avoid paying street taxes, put out a hit on him and shot him in the back and leg, Hill told jurors in opening remarks.

And the government hit Hill with a thick indictment accusing him of supplying more than 3 tons of cocaine to two of Chicago's largest street gangs, the Gangster Disciples and Vice Lords, between 1987 and 1995.

"If the government had offered me five years (in prison), I would have taken it," said Hill, 33, representing himself at the trial. "But they want to make an example out of me."

He faces up to life in prison if convicted in U.S. District Court.

Also on trial is Cordell Jones, accused of carrying out a shooting on Hill's orders. The victim was shot in the head but survived.

Hill fled after he was indicted in early 1996, first to Mexico and eventually Africa, Assistant U.S. Atty. Colleen Coughlin told jurors.

During his absence, Hill's sister, Sharon Neely, who helped launder drug money, and two others were convicted and two couriers were acquitted. Before that 1996 trial, 11 other defendants pleaded guilty.

Early last year, Hill, one of the top 15 most wanted fugitives sought by the U.S. Marshals Service, was arrested in Guinea, West Africa, operating a business selling tons of coffee.

"I ran, I ran home to Africa because I was afraid," Hill, a native of Chicago, said Thursday in court.

Both Hill and Jones chose to wear orange prison jumpsuits in court instead of street clothes.

Coughlin and co-prosecutor Daniel Gillogly promised an inside view of Hill's cocaine-trafficking from "those who helped him on a daily basis."

But Hill said the government's case was built on deals with liars trying to avoid stiff prison sentences.

According to Coughlin, Hill's operation brought multi-kilo quantities of cocaine from California to Chicago in cars with secret compartments, a customized tour bus, commercial airliners and Lear jets.

Prosecutors alleged that Hill ordered the killing of two men whom he suspected of plotting to kidnap him. One survived the attack.

Coughlin said Hill sank more than $2 million in cocaine profits into a bus company, a record business and the production of a full-length movie based on his life as a drug dealer.